Critters abound on the island

A marmot runs on the track after Williams driver Pastor Maldonado of Venezuela crashes during the first free practice, at the Gilles Villeneuve racetrack, Friday.Luca Bruno
/ AP

A GROUNDHOG SETTLES IN FOR A SNOOZE YESTERDAY ATOP A TIRE WALL AT THE CIRCUIT GILLES-VILLENEUVE. Chuck the groundhog just can’t seem to wait for the start of the Grand Prix du Montreal which is set for June 11, exactly one month away. The critter was spotted resting on the safety tires at the first hairpin where workers were installing them.robert galbraith

A groundhog runs into its burrow on a sunny day in Jean-Drapeau Park in Montreal on Tuesday, August 23, 2011.Dario Ayala
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL — In a machine costing millions of dollars, moving at 200 plus kilometres an hour, you could reasonably expect to dodge other race cars, perhaps the odd tire that flies off in an accident, but perhaps the wildest thing that the Formula One drivers have to contend with at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is wild life.

Specifically groundhogs.

As the race track, named for the late great driver, is located on an island in the middle of a river and is partially a public park, critters abound.

Majestic herons stand at attention in the many waterways and ponds, raccoons in the underbrush, squirrels, chipmunks, foxes of the animal kind and most famously what in French is called a marmotte and in English a groundhog.

Preparations for Grand Prix means bleacher construction, sprucing up the press box and new sponsor signs like Rolex and Shell carefully painted on the walls and overpasses of the track.

It’s also trapping time for the little brown beasties, said François Cartier with Parc-Jean-Drapeau, the pari-municipal organization that oversees maintenance of both Île-Notre-Dame and Île-Ste-Helene.

“Starting in the spring, in April, when the marmots come out of hibernation, we hire a company called La Faune and they come and trap as many animals as they can find,” Cartier said.

Stand down PETA, the animals are not killed, merely relocated.

La Faune fans out all over the island and humanely traps as many groundhogs as they can find near the race course.

Two weeks before the race, the trappers return to see if they missed any stragglers or late sleepers.

Cartier says they come back three times and on average capture a dozen animals every spring. Each visit costs $450.

“The animals are taken to areas outside Montreal that conform to the to environmental needs for these animals,” Cartier said.

On the Friday before Grand Prix week, in this case May 31, workers with buckets of a liquid cayenne pepper paint the lower regions of the walls around the track to repel the groundhogs and also keep the foxes away from machines and the crowds.

This treatment costs $150, a small price to pay when you realize how much each of the F1 cars costs.

Most famously, the little groundhog devils have been a scourge for Ralf Shumacher in 2007 when one of their ilk disrupted his practice session.

Things ended badly for another animal, also in 2007, when British driver Anthony Davidson hit one on Sunday’s race day and was forced into a pit stop to repair the damage to the right front wing of his car.

In 2008, as a video shows Lewis Hamilton was forced to make a large detour to miss a groundhog that took its chances crossing the track at the hairpin turn, much to the amusement of the crowd watching the practice sessions.

Since those instances and the annual groundhog containment controls there have been no other close calls between man and beast.